From the Archives …

 

Heatwave!

We’ve all been feeling the heat this week. Temperatures at Downside Abbey have been high but we have mercifully avoided the extreme heat that has hit most of the country. There is something to be said about the Mendip climate! Our volunteers, not deterred from the heat, and, in the pleasant temperature and humidity controlled archives, continue their work. 

The Downside Abbey Photo Collection now has over 10,000 digitised images. The photos date back to the early nineteenth century to 2022. Our volunteers, assisted by Downside’s staff, have been cataloguing, digitising, and preserving this historic record of two centuries of the monastic community and their time at Downside. 

The image above is of Dom Ambrose Lambert (1936 – 2011) who managed the abbey’s weather station. The site has been a point for the Meteorological Office since 1915. Dom Ambrose was a keen geographer whose working papers are currently being catalogued, including his meteorological records. He loved the Somerset countryside and published Mendip – A Journey round the ornate Parish Towers (1999) which can be purchased here.